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10 Powerful Tactics To Write A Hard Hitting Call to Action

If you want your website to be just all pretty pictures with little substance, you can stop reading now. If you want your website to generate sales and have robust ROI to show for, then the next 5 minutes you spend on this article will be well worth your while.

Online marketing is a direct response marketer’s dream comes true. You can track every single action and measure every single tactic to determine what works, what doesn’t and how to improve.

The caveat is, you can’t accurately measure the effectiveness of a tactic if there’s no action to track. And if there’s no action for visitors to take, there’s no conversion.

A powerful call-to-action (CTA) is essential to almost any piece of online sales and marketing material. No matter how compelling your copy is or how enticing your offers are, if you don’t get your visitors to take action – whether it’s signing up to your list, getting in touch or making a purchase – you’re not creating RIO or generating revenue.

Unfortunately, Small Business Trends indicates that a large number of B2B websites lack a call-to-action. This mistake is costing them client relationships and ultimately, revenue.

A CTA doesn’t have to be a large obnoxious blinking “BUY NOW” button. There are many forms of CTAs that serve to elicit actions, build relationships and encourage engagements, such as:

· Download an ebook, video training or useful information

· Get on an interest list in anticipation of a product launch

· Request a quote

· Request a product demo

· Get in touch via phone or emails to have questions answered

· Connect on social media

To make your website visitors click on the CTA, you need to make it enticing. No matter how insignificant it seems, clicking on a button means doing work and making a commitment from your visitors’ perspective.

1. Use effective action words

· Start – it gives the impression that once the visitor clicks-through he’s ready to use the product or service. People like instant gratification, and the word “start” implies that the promised outcome is just on the other side of the click.

· Stop – as much as we’re attracted to positive results, our fear of negative outcomes is often even more powerful. Therefore, a CTA that promises to stop an undesirable outcome is attractive to many.

· Build/Grow – it implies that responding to the CTA will give visitors the tools to create a desirable outcome. E.g. “Grow a loyal email list now.”

· Join – humans are social animals and we want to belong. Even more so, we want to belong to a community that reflects an identity we’re aspired to. “E.g. Join our community of over 500,000 savvy content marketers.”

· Discover – it appeals to our curiosity and adventurous nature, and implies that visitors will find out something new when they click on the link.

· The number of people already responded to the CTA – e.g. "Get the world's best marketing resources right to your inbox! Join more than 817,000 inbound marketers!" (This is one of Hubspot’s CTA to join their email list.) This tactic creates a sense of community, and people don’t want to feel left out.

A CTA on Hubspot’s homepage uses number of followers to entice visitors to take action.

7. Keep it short and sweet

Your CTA needs to be straightforward and concise, with no room for ambiguity on what your visitors need to do.

When your CTA is too long, you risk losing your visitors’ attention so instead of responding to the CTA they get distracted and navigate away.

CTA buttons get the most response because we’re conditioned to click on buttons. You text needs to fit into a button without stretching it out to the point where it no longer looks like one, while making sure the text remains legible.

8. Imply exclusivity

Exclusivity works at a few different levels. First, people want what they can’t have. Then they want to feel like they belong to a special group of selected few. Not to mention, there’s always the fear of missing out.

Here’re a few phrases that can create a sense of exclusivity for your offer:

· Request an invitation

· Members only

· Limited spots

· Exclusive access

· Only available to ______

9. Add a click trigger

The term “click triggers” refer to the extra boosts you put next to a CTA button to convince visitors to click it.

Sometimes your visitors may need a little more information than the 5 – 15 words on the CTA button to overcome objections or reduce anxiety to take the action.

10. Make a button look like a button

When visitors come to your website, they rely on visual cues to figure out where things are and what to do with them.

When you CTA looks like a button, and we’re conditioned to click on buttons, your visitors can immediately infer that it’s the action they’re required to take.

Besides the shape and placement of a button, you can also test the color. Typically, contrasting color make the button stand out and get noticed – thereby increasing conversion rate.

The power of using contrasting color: variation B (the green button) saw an 81 percent lift over the control, and variation C (the orange button) saw a 95 percent lift over the control. Image source: copyblogger.

There’re many variables in crafting a CTA, and different consumer segments may respond to the copy and design differently.

It’s therefore important to test the effectiveness of each element with A/B testing to find the sweet spot that works best for your business and target market.

Over to you – what tweaks and improvements are you going to make in your calls-to-action to increase your conversion rate?